Nasa is listening for any peep from Voyager 2 after it lost contact with the spacecraft billions of miles away.
Hurtling ever deeper into interstellar space, Voyager 2 has been out of touch ever since flight controllers accidentally sent a wrong command more than a week ago that tilted its antenna away from Earth. The spacecraft’s antenna shifted a mere 2%, but it was enough to cut communications.
Although it’s considered a long shot, Nasa said on Monday that its huge dish antenna in Canberra, Australia, is on the lookout for any stray signals from Voyager 2, which is more than 12bn miles (19bn km) away. It takes more than 18 hours for a signal to reach Earth from so far away.
Voyager 2 was launched from Florida in 1977 to study the outer solar system as well as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – and was sent up just a couple weeks ahead of its identical twin, Voyager 1. It entered interstellar space in 2018, having discovered a host of new moons on Uranus and one on Jupiter.
In the coming week, the Canberra antenna – part of Nasa’s Deep Space Network – will also bombard Voyager 2’s vicinity with the correct command, in the hope that it hits its mark, according to Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Voyager missions.
Otherwise, Nasa will have to wait until October for an automatic spacecraft reset that should restore communication, according to officials.
Still in touch with Earth, Voyager 1 is now nearly 15bn miles (24bn km) away, making it humanity’s most distant spacecraft.
